Bolshevism; practice and theory

BOLSHEVIK THEORY
climate is one of the decisive factors, is equally com-
patible with materialism. So is the Freudian view,
which traces everything to sex. There are innumerable
ways of viewing history which are materialistic in the
philosophic sense without being economic or falling
within the Marxian formula. Thus the "materialistic
conception of history" may be false even if materialism
in the philosophic sense should be true.
On the other hand, economic causes might be at
the bottom of all political events even if philosophic
materialism were false. Economic causes operate
through men's desire for possessions, and would be
supreme if this desire were supreme, even if desire
could not, from a philosophic point of view, be ex-
plained in materialistic terms.
There is, therefore, no logical connection either way
between philosophic materialism and what is called
the "materialistic conception of history."
It is of some moment to realize such facts as this,
because otherwise political theories are both supported
and opposed for quite irrelevant reasons, and argu-
ments of theoretical philosophy 'are employed to
determine questions which depend upon concrete facts
of human nature. This mixture damages both philo-
sophy and politics, and is therefore important to avoid.
For another reason, also, the attempt to base a
political theory upon a philosophical doctrine is un-
desirable. The philosophical doctrine of materialism, if
true at all, is true everywhere and always; we cannot
expect exceptions to it, say, in Buddhism or in the
Hussite movement. And so it comes about that people
whose politics are supposed to be a consequence of
their metaphysics grow absolute and sweeping, unable
to admit that a general theory of history is likely, at
80